AFTER nearly two years away, the much-loved Barfleur ferry will be returning to Poole.

Two years on from its removal from service, popular ferry Barfleur will return to action.

Brittany Ferries confirmed the ferry would cross the Channel again next month, running twice daily rotations.

Her first arrival into the port is on Monday, March 28 at 6.45am, with the subsequent departure for Cherbourg at 8.30am.

A Brittany Ferries spokesperson said: “We are delighted to confirm that Barfleur will return to Poole, nearly two years after her last departure.

“It’s been a tough time for everyone, but the storms are beginning to subside and blue skies are appearing on the horizon.

“It’s a horizon that will once more be filled with the sight of this much-loved ship returning to her home port and regularly serving the region.”

It was towards the end of the 1980s when Brittany Ferries originally decided to commission an 18,000 ton ship for its Poole to Cherbourg route.

Barfleur and its sister ship the 27,000 ton Normandie – destined for the Portsmouth to Caen route – were part of a bold £190 million investment by the French company as it prepared to take on the competition from the Channel Tunnel.

The £53 million Barfleur took shape in the Kvaerner-Masa yards, in the Finnish capital of Helsinki. It was designed to carry up to 1,304 passengers, 280 cars and 61 trailers.

“When the tunnel comes into service, cross-Channel travellers will be faced with two clear alternatives – use the tunnel or Brittany Ferries,” the company’s UK managing director Ian Carruthers predicted in 1991.

The gamble was whether the facilities on board the two new ferries, their departure times and routes direct to the west of France and Spain would make the sea crossing a greater lure than “going down the tube”.

Barfleur was originally due to arrive in Poole in January 1992, but a 19 per cent boom in passenger numbers in 1991 prompted a rethink from Brittany Ferries.

Delivery was delayed by three months so the ship could be “stretched”. An extra nine metres was welded into its mid-section, adding £5 million to the overall cost, but increasing the ferry’s length and weight, providing 200 more cabin berths, and bigger public and car deck areas.

After sea trials, the ship sailed from Finland to Cherbourg at the end of March 1992, then crossed the Channel for a gala welcome in Poole on the sunny morning of April 4, 1992.